Mining
Everything the miner does, and what it pays.
No estimates on this page. Every number comes straight out of the contract. If we could not compute a figure exactly, it is not here.
It is one program on your own machine
You download it, give it your wallet, and leave it running. It talks to the blockchain directly. There is no pool to join, no account to open, and nobody standing between you and the contract.
You keep the key
Your wallet secret is unlocked on your computer and used there. It is never uploaded, never copied, and never seen by us.
It checks before it spends
Every submission is tested against the live chain first. If it would fail, the miner does not send it, so you are not charged for it.
Typed, not clicked
Today it runs from a terminal, and it was built so a program can drive it as easily as a person. A version that runs in a browser is being built.
The reward schedule
Rewards shrink, by one published rule.
There is no halving event and no announcement. Every win pays slightly less than the one before it, forever, following a rule you can check.
The rule
Take whatever is left of the 21,000,000. Divide it by a number that starts at 10,000 and grows to 45,350 over the first 8,640 wins, then stops. That is the reward. It never drops below one whole token, and it can never pay out more than is left.
Because the reward is a share of what remains, the pot never runs out early and there is no final cliff. It simply gets thinner.
| Win | Divided by | Reward | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 10,000 | 2,100.00 | The opening reward |
| 10th | 10,036 | 2,090.59 | |
| 100th | 10,405 | 1,998.76 | |
| 1,000th | 14,087 | 1,370.93 | |
| 8,640th | 45,345 | 320.04 | The divisor stops growing here |
| 10,000th | 45,350 | 310.55 | |
| 50,000th | 45,350 | 128.55 | |
| 100,000th | 45,350 | 42.68 | |
| 200,000th | 45,350 | 4.71 | |
| 270,231st | 45,350 | 1.00 | The first win that pays the minimum |
| 315,580th | 45,350 | — | The last token is minted. Mining rewards end |
23,315
Wins to the halfway point
Half of all 21,000,000 tokens are minted by this win. The front of the schedule is where most of the supply lives.
270,231
First win paying the minimum
From here on every win pays exactly one token, because the rule refuses to go any lower.
315,580
Wins in total, ever
The last token is minted on this win. After it, mining still secures the chain but pays nothing.
The bond
Every Proof Hunter has tokens locked inside it
This is the part of the design the name comes from, and it is worth being exact about because it changes what you are paid.
On an ordinary win
You are paid the whole reward. Nothing is held back, nothing is taken, and no fee is deducted. Fifty wins out of fifty-one look like this.
On a win that makes a Hunter
The entire reward for that round is minted into the Proof Hunter rather than into your balance. Your wallet receives nothing from that round — you receive the Hunter, and every one of those tokens is sealed inside it. Destroying the Hunter releases them; nothing else does.
So a Proof Hunter is not only a picture. It is a picture with a known quantity of tokens bonded inside it, recorded on the chain, that travels with the Hunter whoever holds it. That is why the odds and the tiers matter, and it is why hunts exist as a way to trade them.
Difficulty
The puzzle adjusts to whoever turns up.
The aim is one win somewhere in the world every five minutes, whether ten people are mining or ten thousand.
5 min
The target pace
What the system aims for between wins. Individual gaps vary — this is an average it steers towards, not a timetable.
144
Wins between adjustments
After every 144 wins the puzzle is re-tuned. Faster than five minutes on average and it gets harder; slower and it gets easier.
1.25×
Rescue if it stalls
If nobody wins for a long stretch, the puzzle eases by a quarter at a time, and never by more than double in one stretch.
Why nobody can see the puzzle coming
Each puzzle is built from a block of the chain that has already been written, and the system waits three blocks before using it. Nobody can prepare an answer in advance, and nobody can nudge the chain to produce a puzzle that suits them. It is the same puzzle for everyone, and it arrives at the same moment for everyone.
The odds
One win in fifty-one makes art.
Every square is one win
These odds never build up. Every win is judged on its own. Going a hundred wins without a Hunter does not make the next one more likely, and nothing is owed to you for waiting.
Only 5,000 Proof Hunters can ever exist. Once the last is made, wins still pay tokens but no more art appears.
And how rare it is
The more comfortably your answer beat the puzzle, the rarer the Hunter. You cannot aim for a tier; you can only win by a wider margin.
- Common
- 70%
- Uncommon
- 22%
- Rare
- 7%
- Legendary
- 1%
Shares of the Hunters that get made, not of all wins. A Legendary is one per cent of one in fifty-one.
What it costs you
Two costs, and we are not hiding either.
Electricity
Your computer works hard while it is mining, so it uses more power and runs warmer. We cannot tell you what that costs, because it depends on your machine and your tariff. Check both before you leave it running for weeks.
A network fee on every submission
Sending an answer to the chain costs a small fee, and that fee is paid whether the answer is accepted or not. The miner tests each one first and refuses to send the ones that would clearly fail, which avoids most wasted fees. Some still slip through when somebody beats you by a second.
A faster computer wins more often
This is a guessing race. A machine that guesses faster wins more. We tuned the program so an ordinary laptop stays in the race, and we will not pretend that makes it equal. Somebody with much bigger hardware will earn more than you.
You can be right and still get nothing
Two people can solve the same puzzle seconds apart and only the first to arrive is paid. This is normal and it will happen to you. It is not your computer failing, and there is no way to remove it.
You set a spending limit when you start the miner, and it will not go past it.See the published addresses.
Now you know what it pays.
One program, one command, no account. Every release is published with a fingerprint you can check before you run it.